Tommy’s Camp

“There are places I’ll remember all my life, though some have changed.”

So goes the first line of a Beatle song and it most certainly describes the wooded area around Tommy’s Camp and my memories of the camp itself. 

First, let me tell that it was definitely a camp.  Where I grew up, people called their summer place out at the lake “The Cottage”.  Even the camp with no electricity or running water that my parents built back in the forties, and which they rented to Americans all these years – some still come up and ‘rent’ it, (actually they just give us something) – is still called ‘the cottage’.  When Fran and I moved to Timmins, and later to Fort Frances, all of those folks referred to their summer place as “The Camp” but when you’d see it, it was surely more of a cottage.  However, Tommy’s place was a one-room shack made of rough boards with double walls with, perhaps four inches of some kind of insulation between them, and covered with tarpaper.  It was definitely a camp.

Tommy owned a couple of bush lots next to our family farm and his camp was located just inside the property line near our backfield, one that we called the “post field”.  In the winter months he used the camp to stay over on weeknights so he could get up and feed the horses before his breakfast and thereby get an early start at the bush work in the morning.  As soon as there was sufficient snow, it was banked up all around the outside of the building to provide extra fortification against the winter cold.  Inside, there was a wood cook stove, a rough table with a couple of chairs, and a small cot that served as a bed.  Only two small windows let in the light; one facing south from which you could see the horse stable, and an even smaller one facing west gave one a view of the road entering the clearing from the field.  A few shelves served as a cupboard for the dishes and some food items plus, always, there were some big Eddy matches in a jar.  The matches were kept in the jar because there was more than one story of “the mice starting the matches and burning the place down” and, also in jars, there was always some sugar in one and a few handfuls of prunes in another.  Tommy said, “They’d be handy for a fella to survive on if he were ever lost in the bush and happened upon the camp.”  I remember the matches because I probably used them once or twice to light up a smoke and I’m sure, on occasion, I helped myself to some sugar and a few prunes to ‘survive’ until I got back to our farmhouse.

There was always some reading material around.  Magazines, newspapers, The Eganville Leader, and usually a novel or two were strewn about.  I know now how important it is to get a kid hooked on reading.  We now know how teaching a child to read is a multi-faceted process and a skilled teacher knows how to integrate so many of the skills and experiences across a wide variety of interesting activities.  I find it immoral that television and radio ads will try to sell parents on some quick fix CD or video series that will have their child reading in no time at all.  It must be devastating beyond imagination to find that, for whatever reason, your child is just not learning to read like the rest and is falling further and further behind.  I know my teacher was not a reading expert but somewhere around grade four or five she got David and me – there were only two of us in the grade - turned on to reading.  We read everything.  There was a small bookcase – more like a china cabinet - in our one-room schoolhouse and I think we read every book in it.  The Hardy Boys series, the Dave Dawson books, we read them all.  I recall one of my favourite spots at home at that time was sitting at the foot of the bed on top of the chest of drawers reading by the light from the skylight window.  Tommy was considered to be ‘well read’ in the community.  He had finished his Entrance (Grade Eight), which was a good feat for the farm boys even in my time, and we all knew he kept a diary.  I recollect, that, at least for me at my age, he seemed to be up on world news and able to offer an informed opinion on most of what was going on.  I recall several ‘sittings’ in Tommy’s Camp just enjoying whatever was there for reading.

One particular Sunday afternoon after reading and hanging out in the camp by myself for a good couple of hours, I started heading back home.  That year the road came right down through the middle of the post field and I must have been halfway up the field before I saw Tommy coming, walking.  I felt as if I was caught in the act.  I wasn’t sure what act I was caught in, I knew he’d approve of my reading and wouldn’t mind if a few prunes were missing.  The smell of tobacco, if there had been any on that day, would be long gone.  Tommy stopped and waited for me.  To this day I don’t know if he was acting and enjoying the moment or if he was genuine in his question.

  “Gee, Boy, did you feed and water the horses?”

It had never occurred to me to look after the horses even though there is no doubt that I could have.  I was used to and comfortable with feeding and brushing old Dick and Dan on our farm and from my early years felt quite at home petting horses or cattle, talking to them, and walking between them, cleaning out their stalls or putting in fresh feed.  Talking to them was key.  “Never surprise them,” my dad warned us.  “Talk to the them, let them know you’re there, and talk to them softly so they won’t get nervous.”  So, I very well could have fed Tommy’s horses, cleaned out from them and taken them for a drink at the creek.  I just didn’t think of it until he asked.  I blushed and said “No.”  To try to redeem myself I followed quickly with “Would they kick?”  He just chuckled at the idea and answered, “No they wouldn’t kick you!”  He must have wondered what the heck I’d be doing back there at his camp all by myself but we exchanged pleasantries and each went on our way.  He may have double-checked his supply of matches, sugar and prunes, yet, he didn’t cross examine me or lay on some guilt trip.  He just seemed to trust that whatever I was up to, it wouldn’t change his world in the grand scheme of things.  Years later, my family and I and some of the relatives rented a cottage from Tommy’s son, James.  I noted how James was very trusting of us too.  He left all kinds of tools and tackle, boating gadgets and life jackets lying around and never seemed worried that we might take something.  I’m sure Tommy never knew how his behaviour rubbed off on me that day, or on James later, and that his education was helping me with my love of reading.

The camp is gone now.  Skidders and tractors have changed the way we work the bush and, with better roads and vehicles there’s no need to stay overnight.  There’s serenity around the area where the camp used to be though.  I could never put my finger on it until I started exploring the hiking trails in Algonquin Park with Fran and our children.  I’d read the brochure:

"Look around you.  Notice the old mature trees in this area.  The yellow birch to the left is over 150 years old and the hemlock directly in front has been there for more than 100 years."

The old people, like my dad and Tommy, always left a few good trees “for seed,” they said.  Actually, as my dad told me when I was an adult, part of it was for insurance.  “If you ever needed some money in a hurry, they’d be handy to cut and get out.”  I think, too, they had a sense of aesthetics; just protecting and saving some of the old mature forests.  Tommy saved more than just a few of them around the area of his camp.  I’ve stopped there on more than one occasion and turned off the snowmobile to just sit and reflect and listen.  There are some yellow birch and hemlock and an oak or two that I’m sure would rival the age of any in Algonquin Park.  Grandma’s Road to Quadeville used to pass right by there and I know that Tommy and his father plus many of my own ancestors passed directly under these very same trees.  In the early days when the settlers were clearing the land there was never enough hay to feed the horses and cattle so, in the wintertime they would go out on the frozen wetlands and cut the wild hay and carry it home on sleighs.  The meadow, just around a couple of corners from Tommy’s Camp, served this purpose well for our forefathers and I can almost hear the hissing of the sleigh runners and the jingling of the horses’ harness as I sit and listen.  I’m thinking, “They may have stopped to rest the horses under this very tree.”  No doubt, it’s highly probable that our First Nations people may have had similar moments at this exact spot long before the arrival of the white man.  It’s humbling to recognize that one’s private and unusual moments are only part of a general pattern shared by countless others.

Ah yes.  There are places I’ll remember all my life and thank goodness, some of them haven’t changed much at all.

Ó Short Stories by Jack Madigan

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